The Advocate runs a short fiction competition each year. The 2020 deadline for submissions is the close of business on Friday, September 4, 2020. Submissions will not be returned, so authors should maintain copies of their work.

Competition Details

Eligible Contributors

Any person who is now, or has been, a member of the Law Society of British Columbia (including lawyers, judges and masters) or who is an articled student. Contest judges and the "staff" of the Advocate are ineligible to contribute.

Eligible Fiction

A fictional work, written in English, to a strict maximum of 2,500 words that deals, if only incidentally, with legal subject matter.

The contributor must be the author of the work, which must be entirely original and must not ever have been published or submitted for publication or consideration in a writing competition elsewhere.

Deadline For Submissions

The close of business on Friday, September 4, 2020. Submissions will not be returned, so authors should maintain copies of their work.

Format For Submissions

Two double-spaced, typed manuscript copies, each with a separate cover sheet bearing the work’s title together with its author’s name, address, daytime telephone number and a word count. The author’s name should not appear anywhere on or in the manuscript itself, as all submissions will be judged anonymously, strictly on literary merit.

David Roberts, Q.C., Anne Giardini, Q.C., and Peter Roberts, Q.C. The decisions of the judges as to the literary merit of the contributions shall be final.

Prizes

First Prize:

$400 gift certificate at a local book store and publication in the Advocate.

Second Prize:

$250 gift certificate at a local book store and possible publication in the Advocate.

Third Prize:

$100 gift certificate at Zefferelli’s Spaghetti Joint and possible publication in the Advocate.

Winning entries will be selected by, at the latest, February 19, 2020. Contest judges may award fewer than three prizes if, in their judgment, they consider it appropriate.

All submissions, including winning entries, will also be considered for
possible publication by the Vancouver Bar Association or an independent publisher in a selection of “legal fictions” to be released at a later date.

Transfer Of Rights

In consideration of having their fiction reviewed for:

(a) possible selection as winning entries;

(b) possible publication in the Advocate; and

(c) possible inclusion in a selection of submissions to be published in
book form;

contributors agree upon submitting their work that the Vancouver Bar Association (publisher of the Advocate), or its licensee, shall have the sole and exclusive right, in Canada and for a period of 15 years, to print, publish and sell their work in such form or forms as the Vancouver Bar Association may in its discretion consider appropriate, such right to revert automatically to all contributors whose works of fiction are not selected as winning entries or for inclusion in the selection of submissions to be published.

Contributors further undertake, if required by the Vancouver Bar Association, to execute both a written assignment in order to confirm the transfer of rights described above to the Vancouver Bar Association and a waiver of
the moral rights attached to their work, should their work be selected for publication in the Advocate as a winning entry or for inclusion in a selection
of submissions to be published in book form. All proceeds or royalties, if any, from the sales of such a selection will be paid to the benefit of the
Vancouver Bar Association, a non-profit organization.